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Sunday, 1 April 2012

Out of Solder

Hey there! I bet you were wondering, "Gee, I wonder if she ever finished that squid."

Well, kind of. I got all of the pieces foiled up with copper foil, which, let me tell you, took a long, long time. When you foil your pieces of glass, you have to be really careful to get the piece of glass exactly in the centre of the foil, or it shows through on the other side. Then when you get the foil exactly placed on the glass piece, you have to burnish it down with a fid so that it sticks to the glass properly.

"Fid." I like that word. Here's what a fid looks like:

You burnish the copper foil with the flat bit at the end.

Since this squid piece has like a zillion little pieces of glass to foil, this took me, as I've already said, a long, long time. But I really love when you get all of the pieces foiled. Each one looks like a little piece of jewellery in a copper setting.

All copper foiled up.

Ain't it purty?

After that, you paint flux onto the copper and use your soldering iron to (theoretically) run a nice, even seam of lead along the copper bits, soldering the pieces together. In practice, my solder lines are not always as nice and even as I'd like them to be.

All in all, I got about halfway done with the front side of the piece, when I completely ran out of solder.

Looks like I'm going to have to return to the stained glass supply place before I can finally finish this piece. Curses!